Passage II

Still can't figure just what in the conversation made me pass out last week. If the abuse stories got to me, I may be better off. But the last thing said could as easily have had to do with the plant.

"Oh, they'll fire him," Terry Lynn tells William as I walk by, "It takes a while when they do that, but they always get them." She could mean anyone. She dislikes me, but I doubt that makes me unique.

Moneypenney called at work today, and I told her everything was fine, of course. She started off in French, and I felt flattered even though she initially threw me and wound up apologising profusely for her supposed accent. I had to go to Bettina's desk to take the call, but what can I do? I think about her when I visit the ducks.

"Cheers, Bettina; have another ficus."

Once upon a time, Bettina, the Sátanas must have been a real creek, though it must have dried sometimes without the treated water coming out of the pipe -- meandering flat on the flattish sand, a line of trees between the sparser bush.

The story will wait.

If I leave, will they keep Edna on? Maybe I should just give Edna some money and know she's moved out.

Ficus in Chief

By her desk, by the door I walk by every day, Bettina has a ficus, the only one in the entire building, as near as I can tell.

She wants to apolgise, wants me to know she's still angry. It gives an interesting expression, but I have no idea what to say.

"Nice ficus."

Colorblindness in the Abstract

I can never figure what people see. Like I spent an evening once explaining red to Carl. He let me keep at it like a student who's just discovered phenomenology. Then, knowing he's colorblind must give him fits when he looks at his paintings. But maybe not: I'm sure he left thinking it was attitudinal.

Bettina went off on me today, just really angry. Edna chirped: Bettina snapped smack in the doorway to the workroom, both of us framed like Punch and Judy. The table was looking down when I turned around, but that wouldn't last.

Bettina someone I see in the hall, or at her desk. We'd never spoken, just Hello and some joke on the company or the brown paper wrapper over LISA windows, more to slow her down or excuse my lingering an extra second than anything. Normally, I'd call her response attraction, but I doubt it. She must be five foot nine in stockings -- were one to see her in stockings -- and becomes amazing with the office heels. I'm s-h-o-r-t. All I'd done was shave the goat beard finally. But she talked like I'd betrayed a trust.

I'd get rid of one writerly trait at a time, I figured -- just quietly, no comment, no matter how little any of it has with typing even a word. I'd have better acted like a ficus, strange as an actual green ficus would be at LISA. People forget what doesn't change. She must have felt some complicity in the jokes, when I wanted to say, Hey, for $2.75 and a gallon tank, I could solve all LISA's problems and clean the building.

I suppose there's no way to mention what I'm doing here.

From how she looks and where she sits, does everyone slogg by each day and forget to ask if she has a brain? Must be some kind of supply and demand thing applies.